Unrest In S. Africa `On The Wane` After 2,300 Killed, Institute Says

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- An independent institute says the anti- apartheid violence that has claimed more than 2,300 lives in 2 1/2 years is beginning to decrease.

But the Institute of Race Relations cautioned late Thursday that the number of people killed could be higher than official statistics indicate because of the state of emergency crackdown on reporting of the unrest.

The independent monitor of racial violence said 21 people were killed last month compared with 40 in January and said the unrest is ``now quite clearly on the wane.``

``The average daily fatality rate during the past six months was slightly more than one per day, compared with more than five per day during the preceding six months,`` the institute said in a report.

More than 2,300 people, the overwhelming majority of them black, have been killed since a wave of violence against the white-minority government and its policies of racial separation, known as apartheid, erupted in September 1984.

President Pieter Botha declared a state of emergency June 12, granting the security forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention in a bid to crush the unrest.

In a reversal of past trends, the institute said conflict between South Africa`s rival anti-apartheid groups was the primary source of death in the violence, replacing acts by the security forces.

The institute said that in 1985, security forces were responsible for about half of the approximately 1,000 deaths in the racial unrest while violence between the feuding blacks accounted for about one-third of the deaths.

``Last year, the positions were reversed,`` the independent institute said in the report. ``The remaining fatalities had occurred in circumstances which were not clear.``

In another development, the government Friday assumed extraordinary powers to expel mixed-race pupils and trainee teachers suspected of anti-government activities from state-run schools.

Also Friday, Constitutional Development Minister Chris Heunis told opposition legislators that about 64,000 blacks were relocated in South Africa or moved to black self-administered tribal homelands last year.